(CTIA 2006: Springtime For Cellular In Vegas
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Alex Pournelle and Ernest Lilley traveled east and west, respectively, to see what's new at this Spring's Cellular Telephone and Internet Association (CTIA) event.
As in every other digital electronics market, what's going on is a mix of convergence and cosmetics, though the reality of genuinely high bandwidth is beginning to reach the consumer. Unfortunately for the U.S. market, we already have, at least compared to other countries, all the cheap broadband we can surf, so it's difficult to sell wireless data access to all but a small segment. The odds are, dear reader, that you're not in that segment. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that if you're over thirty, you're on the wrong side of the next digital divide. Don't think so? When was the last time you used a text message? E-mail is so last century, as anyone under 25 can tell you.
Mobile Music Matters
The other thing that the young and hip can tell you is that they're excited about their cell phones turning into mobile media players. Don't ask us why, especially when it comes to watching TV on your cell phone, but if you've got to carry around a device the size of an MP3 player it might as well act like one. Sprint rolled out the first mobile music store last year offering full track songs and were surprise to find that there was a tremendous demand...even though they were selling songs for $2.50 each, two and a half times the cost from non-mobile sites. In the first three months, users downloaded over a million songs, despite the need for an EVDO handset, of which there were only two at the time. Of course, Sprint did give away the first five songs, but even so long after that offer expired the downloads continue to grow. Verizon has since introduced a competitive service for $1.99, but until Sprint sees demand soften, they'll keep their prices steady.
Extending Enterprise Value with Web 2.0 In this webcast we will talk about how to simply build and quickly remix Web 2.0 applications and the role of the IT department and how they support mashups. We will discuss how IBM can help IT teams adapt existing enterprise systems as well as develop unique ones that can support end user driven mashups in a reliable, scalable and secure way. We will highlight a simple scenario adapting an enterprise information source for mashups and how to test it. We will also cover how IBM can help you build agile, fast and simple web applications based on dynamic scripting languages that dramatically reduces development time. Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - 12pm PT / 3pm ET
2008 International Mathematica Conference Dr. Dobb's interviews Wolfram Research's Theo Gray, co-founder and Director of User Interfaces, and Roger Germundsson, Director of Research and Development, about the upcoming 2008 International
Mathematica Conference.
In this volume of Best of BYTE, we explore the emergence of some heuristic algorithms. Although we have only scratched the surface of this intriguing subject, we hope we've suggested the potential of the synthesis of heuristics and algorithms.
